DIY room heater that costs just a few cents to run per day

As the cooler days set in, so does the pressing urge to stay curled up in bed rather than emerge into the biting cold that infiltrates my bedroom each morning… The most obvious of these solutions is to buy or turn on a heater – and on the REAL frosty days I’m guilty of letting the heater rip. But at what cost?

According to energy suppliers, the average Australia household consumes roughly 14% more energy in Winter which leads to bigger, nastier bills. But isn’t there a way to stay cosy without copping an inflated energy bill?

WHY YES. YES THERE IS. Thanks to avid YouTuber Dylan Winter (appropriate surname) you can heat an entire room for just 15 cents a day… with a DIY room heater.

What you’ll need to make your DIY room heater

Tealight candles

A medium sized baking tin or cupcake tray

Two terracotta flower pots – 1 small, 1 medium.

How it’s done

Find a safe spot to setup your DIY heater. Perhaps it’s a disused fireplace or an out-of-reach stable surface. Be sure it’s somewhere secure where the candles can’t fall over, and children can’t touch it (as the pots get very hot).

Place the smaller terracotta pot upside down over the tin. Cool air needs to be able to travel under the pot to fuel the candles, so make sure the pot is not making direct contact with the surface underneath it. The tin should be enough to separate your pot from the surface, but you can use some bricks if need be.

Take a silver foil casing from one of your tealight’s and and cover up the irrigation hole in the bottom of your terracotta pot.

Take your second larger terracotta pot and place it over the top of the first one. Leave the hole uncovered on this one as this is where the heat escapes.

Sit back and relax while your new heating unit works it magic!

You can get even more high-tech with this do-it-yourself idea such as this YouTuber has done by attaching a fan to his heater:

Or this Aussie YouTuber that has come up with the ultimate suspended contraption:

How does it work?

The candles produce gases full of heated particles that are captured and channeled through the two pots. As hot gas particles are lighter than the air, they will rise up through the top into the colder area. The system works because the inner-core of the small flower pot gets very hot, heating the air between the two pots. The warm air then flows out the hole of the larger pot, warming the room.

*While we do encourage you to get creative and try out this money-saving idea, it’s also very important to conduct this experiment safely. Do not allow small children to come into contact with the heater, and be sure to take the necessary precautions to ensure no fire could start outside the heating unit.